The manufacturing industry is taking big, bold steps to ensure the safety of its workers. Safety is an important concern in the industry—workers use powerful machinery with a variety of cutting, crushing, and electrical elements that do not mix well with soft human flesh. Accidents in the manufacturing sector are often horrific, grabbing headlines and causing companies to lose face.
Workers should start resting a little easier, though. Industry leaders have turned their keen innovation skills inward, coming up with new ways in which to keep the factory floors safe for employees. Perhaps these leaders have begun to feel a financial pinch; according to Jebaily Law, specialists in workers’ comp in South Carolina, a workplace accident can lead to significant financial losses for a reckless company.
Technology, research, and the push for better communication have all helped to make industrial manufacturing a far safer world than it used to be.
Mobile Saves Lives
A recent article in Forbes discusses some of the many innovations the manufacturing sector is making. Of those innovations, mobile is making huge headway. Mobile technology has received lots of attention in basically every arena it’s entered, and manufacturing is no exception. According to Forbes, mobile’s accomplishments include data management, integrated systems, and easily accessible networks.
One interesting feature mobile is helping to push forward is compliance-tracking. Having compliance-tracking software attached to a mobile network allows for immediate responses. In other words, when something goes haywire, managers and technicians can be alerted right away. And when it comes to responding to manufacturing accidents, timeliness is paramount. The longer it takes to identify a problem, the greater the likelihood of serious accident or death.
Automation Safety Research
Companies have put a lot of money into research to discover the effects of safety on productivity. Manufacturers have long been stuck with a stigma that they value profit over people. The bottom dollar drives decision, this line of thinking goes, and no company would ever slash its financial health in order to shield its workers.
Whether or not this was ever true, employees and industry watchdogs will be relieved to hear that research indicates that automation safety actually makes productivity shoot way up. This finding makes perfect sense when one thinks about it; safe workers are enthusiastic workers, while endangered or injured workers are skittish and less able to do their jobs.
With this research in hand, worker advocates have a strong argument for keeping factories safe: there is no conflict between the financial bottom line and employee safety. Improve one and you improve them both. It’s a win-win.
Communication Initiatives
Manufacturers understand that bad communication leads to disasters. Technology doesn’t work on its own, it needs people to operate it. Disasters such as the Challenger and Chernobyl explosions were widely found to be caused by communication problems.
In response to this, companies have instituted standards of clear communication. Plain language guidelines ensure that product developers make it easy and simple to use industrial equipment. Good technical writers, who can write clear instructions and keep users safe, are an essential component of any manufacturing team.
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